Eudendrium carneum Clarke, 1882

Main stems up to 18cm long- thick, gnarled and heavily fascicled, the fasciculations extending to all but the growing tips of the colony and along the primary branches. Branching profuse, irregular, each branch with 4-7 deep proximal annulations, the younger branches sometimes with scattered groups of annulations, perisarc otherwise smooth, thick and shining.

Hydranths large, of elegant form, with a long body and 28-32 tentacles, a very prominent clavate hypostome (preserved material), and a distinct contraction groove at base.

Female gonophores borne on a specialised blastostyle on a short wrinkled pedicel arising from the smaller branches. Immature gonophores small, knoblike, 4-6 borne in a whorl below a hydranth with 10-14 atrophied tentacles; gonophores later developing a bifurcated spadix. Mature gonophores in elongate clusters of 5-8 scattered along a thickened blastostyle which may be surmounted by a cluster of remnant tentacles without hypostome, each gonophore enclosed in a capsule of perisarc with two large fenestrations.

Nematocysts of two kinds present:

— large heterotrichous anisorhizas, capsule loaf shaped, 20-22 x 9-11 µm, thread very long (up to 1 mm), 1.3 µm wide proximally, armed with thorn-like spines, tapering distally to 0.5 µm diameter, the spines becoming smaller and more closely spaced distally. Very abundant on body of hydranth, in nematocyst ring, on spadix of immature gonophore and scattered on body of the mature gonophore.

— microbasic euryteles, capsule pyriform, 8-9 x 3 µm, shaft 6 x 2 µm with several long spines, thread moderately long with small bristle like spines. Moderately abundant in tentacles.